face again, embarrassed further to realize that he’d been looking at her looking at him, and he cocked his head again. Scared of what her parents might do should they stumble in on this scene, Donna picked up the overalls and pressed them into his hands. She reveled at the touch and the knowledge that she was bare beneath her nightshirt, that one thin layer of cloth and about thirty centimeters of air was all that separated her body from his, it made her light headed. He looked at the overalls, a questioning frown crossing his face, and then he looked at her, his ‘Do I have to?’ expression as clear as a bell.
She nodded vigorously, getting desperate, and slowly he started to put them on. One leg in, he glanced up at her watching him, head cocked in the usual manner and Donna blushed again before leaving the room.
The day passed pretty much as the one before had, with, much to Donna’s mixed relief and disappointment, no further attempts of clothing removal on the part of their feathered guest. He did decide however that the spare room was now too enclosed or too boring, and by mid morning he was prowling restlessly about the rest of the house, but only after Donna and her mother had drawn all the shades.
He was like a caged cat, edgy, but despite that, curious about the things surrounding him. The sources of his interest were strange and varied; things that they thought would amaze or amuse him he shrugged off while other innocuous items delighted him in child like fashion. For instance, the stereo didn’t phase him, he touched a few buttons to see what they did but that was all, but an old hand held rotary eggbeater had him amused for ten minutes solid. The TV would grab his attention intermittently but it seemed to depend on what was on the screen, however it was a fine porcelain figurine of a ballerina on the mantle piece that he returned to stare at time and again.
Through all this Ninah followed him around, explaining everything even though he couldn’t understand her. She was in seventh heaven; finally she’d found someone to listen to her rambling chatter, all the time, without interrupting. He was her ultimate play friend, never saying no, never getting tired, participating in whatever game she thought up at the time and strangely enough, seeming to enjoy them.
Watching them play, Donna was intrigued by the curious mix he represented. On one hand was this almost insatiable thirst for knowledge and incredible understanding of what he saw. He only ever had to be shown how to do something once, no matter how complex or intricate, which spoke of intelligence and memory capabilities she couldn’t grasp. Yet offsetting this was an immature pleasure in the simplest of pastimes and enjoyments. Because of this Ninah was finding it easier to interact and relate to him, something Donna found herself quite jealous of her sister over.
During his prowling, the angel found the full length mirrored door on the closet in Donna’s room and while his own reflection didn’t surprise him, he did see the potential of such a large reflective surface. Abruptly he plonked himself down on the floor before the mirror and began to preen and clean his feathers. Donna fetched him a bowl of water and a flannel and, smiling his thanks at her, he began to use it.
Donna lay on her bed in a patch of sunlight, chin resting on her arms, watching him and taking pleasure in the room’s lazy afternoon warmth and the quiet rustling of his wings. Ninah had left earlier, having grown quickly bored of this cleaning ritual and, unable to rouse him to do anything else for the moment, had gone to find something more interesting to do.
He sat with his back to her and Donna idly studied the strange yet not unattractive muscle structure that supported his wings. Watching them ripple and contract beneath his skin as he flexed, moved and folded them, their passage through the air stirring dust motes in the sunlight. Without even thinking, Donna reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. He paused and looked at her face in the mirror, returned her smile, and went back to what he was doing. He didn’t seem to mind her touch, not even when she ran her hands lightly along his wings, feeling the strength in them.
Biting her lip, she moved slowly off the bed and knelt down behind him as he continued to preen. She tentatively ran her hands up between his wings, feeling the flow of muscles there, her breathing getting a little heavier. She'd never done this sort of thing before, touched a male in so sensual a manner. It was nothing like the few times she’d made out with guys in their cars. It was powerful, electric, probably because she was initiating it and doing it because she wanted it, not because she felt she had to.
She began to move her hands up and down several times, slowly rubbing as if she were giving him a massage, before gathering her courage and leaning forward to softly kiss the back of his neck.
At that he abruptly stopped what he was doing and turned to face her. She quickly withdrew her hands as though she’d been burned. The expression on his face didn’t strike her as an angry or hostile one; it seemed to convey a mixture, confusion, sadness, despair, interest and partial understanding all at once. As if he knew what she was doing and appreciated her attention but at the same time, didn’t want it to continue.
Whatever was about to transpire between them, good or bad, was halted by the doorbell ringing and a few seconds later her mother’s voice called up to her, saying that Father Kelly was here and was you know who with her?
Father Kelly stayed for an hour, trying to communicate with the angel. He’d brought with him a large old illustrated Bible, and from this he read some passages pertaining to angels and showed him pictures. These pictures held his attention longer any other, but didn’t elicit any poignant reaction beyond that. This was rather discouraging to Father Kelly, and Donna thought he’d probably hoped to make a breakthrough here today. Unfortunately he had another house call to make and had to leave, but not totally discouraged, he said he’d return in a day or so and try again.
When the priest left, Donna had hoped that the angel would return to her room and his cleaning, but he wasn’t interested in that anymore and instead, hung around the kitchen doorway watching her mother make a cake. He didn’t seem overly interested and Donna figured she still had a fair chance of drawing his attention to something else. That was until her mother, with a big smile, took the hand beater from the drawer again. Donna groaned inwardly, her mother never used the hand beater because she had a Mixmaster, it was obviously for his sake. From then on Donna doubted a nuclear explosion could have dislodged him from the kitchen.
In a mixture of irritation and jealousy, she threw herself down on the sofa and flicked on the TV. There was nothing on to grab her attention and if that wasn’t enough, she had to listen to her mother showing him how to beat the cake mix, along with Ninah’s annoying “Let me, let me’s”. This was followed by her sister’s business-like allocation of the bowl, wooden spoon, beater and spatula, depending on which had the most mixture adhered to it. Donna could only sigh, a small part of her wishing that she were seven years old again.
The next Saturday brought a close to one of the most stressful weeks the Blair household had ever endured. Not that their visitor was difficult to live with, quite the opposite, it was the uncertainties that surrounded him that were wearing away at everyone.
Neither Ward Parker, Dave Morris nor Father Kelly, all doing quiet independent research of their own, had made any headway into discovering the how’s or why’s of the angel’s presence. They each came every one or two days for their own reasons, to check on his progress, to closer examine his wing structure, to try different languages or maybe just to reassure themselves of his continued actual existence.
As for the angel, whom the Blair family had affectionately come to refer to as Gabe, short for Gabriel, though never to his face, the longer the week dragged on and the more he healed, the more restless he seemed. He would stand at the window for long periods of time, staring up at the sky, and Donna supposed she could understand his longing. If she could fly, she wouldn’t want to be cooped up in a house either. But although Gabe obviously chafed at his confinement, he also seemed to understand that it was necessary and that they w
ere trying to help him. After all if he’d wanted to leave badly enough, there wasn’t a thing they could do to stop him, but he stayed at any rate.
Ed was getting more worried as the days went by. The men in grey suits hadn’t left town, in fact, if anything, there seemed to be more of them. Black, evil-looking helicopters regularly flew over the town, and it felt like everywhere he looked there was a pair of dark sunglasses watching his every move.
There was no mention in the local paper of what was going on, just a vague reference to the government men’s presence in town. At the small office building where Ed worked as an accountant, the gossip around the water cooler on the first floor had reached a dull roar, as speculation over the situation grew. There were some pretty interesting and wild theories put forward, most concerning UFO’s, but none were as bizarre as the truth. Ed began to wonder how long his secret could be kept, especially in a small town like Haven. Paranoia started to gnaw at his mind; was he acting differently to everybody else, had anyone noticed?
Most of all Ed wanted to find out who the men in grey were, but he didn’t know how to go about it without
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